


Nostalgia Goggles

by misura



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Getting Back Together, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 04:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Jake hasn't missed any of this. Except maybe Nate. A little.





	Nostalgia Goggles

Jake hasn't really missed the responsibility or the uniforms or all the sirs and saluting and stuff that comes with it, but he can admit to himself (and only to himself) that he's kinda, sorta missed Nate, and Nate's sense of responsibility and Nate's uniform (it looks good on him, all right?) and Nate constantly and incessantly giving him shit about all the sirs and saluting Jake couldn't care less about.

He's pretty sure it's gonna get old real soon, only hopefully, by then, he'll be just about ready to get out of here. With luck, Nate's gonna find a new drifting buddy, someone as serious and responsible as Nate is, rather than someone fun and gorgeous and charming like Jake.

Let's be honest here: guys like Nate? A dime a dozen. Can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting one. All right, maybe not all of them've got Nate's looks, or Nate's ability to actually crack a smile right about the moment when you're about to give up on him as a lost cause, but still.

Jake's the unique one around here. The one of a kind, who doesn't, cannot belong.

Better for everyone around if he just ups and leaves ASAP. Not like they need him around here, the way they needed his father, to give rousing speeches and cancel the apocalypse and all that. Anyone's going to be doing that, Jake's pretty sure Mako's got it covered.

"That bad, huh?" Nate asks, and it's annoying and more than a little unfair, Jake thinks, the way Nate's jumped straight back into acting like he's in Jake's head, like it's been only hours since they've Drifted together. Like Nate's still the one guy who knows him better than anyone else ever can or will.

Jake shrugs. "Place hasn't changed much." Nate has, a little. Jake wonders what this other guy? girl? was like, if Nate misses the idiot at all. If they miss Nate, and being in Nate's head. If they know what Nate gets like when you kiss him just right, get him to let go of that iron self-control of his a little (or a lot).

"Well, you haven't been gone _that_ long," Nate says. He sounds the tiniest bit accusing.

"Not long enough, you mean?" Jake grins. "Guess we can agree on that one. Ranger Lambert."

Nate mock-winces. "I'm going to be hearing that from you the rest of my life?"

Jake definitely, positively has no plans of sticking around anywhere near that long. "Dunno. You want to? I mean, you know me, I'm a flexible guy. Whatever turns you on, man."

Nate rolls his eyes. Jake wonders if Nate's suddenly gone and developped a sense of humor, or if this is a delayed reaction to his coming back, if this is Nate's version of having hysterics. "Nate's fine. At least when we're in private."

"Whoa," Jake says. "Almost had me there. But, all right, I can do that. No calling you 'Ranger Lambert' when we're naked in bed together, got it."

He expects Nate to change the subject, to pretend he's gone deaf or something. It's pretty much Nate's default reaction to things he doesn't want to hear or deal with. Nate doesn't get mad: he gets deaf, blind and stupid. It's deeply annoying and enormously unsatisfying.

Instead, Nate asks, "Is that what you think's going to happen?", making it sound like a challenge or something, like Jake's the kind of idiot who'd turn down a face as pretty as Nate's just because it's also got Nate's personality attached to it. (Jake knows perfectly well what kind of idiot he is, thank you very much. He's the kind of idiot too smart to stick around in a place where he doesn't fit in.)

"I think that if I were to get inside your head right now, that's exactly what I'd see, yeah," Jake says. It's a bit of a bluff, but Nate's always had a lousy poker face - except for that one time when they played strip poker, and Jake ended up wearing his right sock and a pair of boxers, with Nate still in uniform, looking all smug and annoying and sexy.

Not that Jake retains any fond memories of that time. He left, didn't he? That says it all.

"What about you?" Nate asks. Denying nothing, Jake notes. Admitting nothing, either. Typically Nate, really. Almost makes him feel nostalgic.

"Well, I'm not a repressed stick-in-the-mud," Jake says. "Plenty of fun to be had out there, if you got an open mind. Sorry, man, but I've kinda moved on."

"Is that so." Nate's tone is very flat. "Good for you."

"That wasn't a come-on or an invitation or something, was it?" Jake thinks he should probably drop this. He's made his point, and as soon as the two of them get into the Drift together, Nate's going to know him for a big, fat liar. "I mean, I don't want things to get all awkward between us."

Nate raises his hands in a gesture that, from Nate, has never ever indicated surrender. "Just making conversation. I missed you."

"See, that's not fair," Jake says. "That's like, cutting my legs right from under me. Here I am, playing it nice and cool, and then you gotta go and say something like that. What do you want me to say? That I regret leaving? I don't. Not even for a minute, not even a second."

"Bullshit," Nate says. Anyone ever kick Nate out of here, out of the program, Jake figures he's probably going to curl up somewhere and die.

Jake sighs. "Missed you, too. A little."

Nate grins. It lights his face right up, suckers you into thinking he's maybe an okay guy after all.

"Like a pain in the ass," Jake adds. "Or like, I dunno, something else unpleasant. And I said it was only a little, didn't I? Not like I missed-you missed you. More like I didn't-really-miss-you missed you."

"Right," Nate says. "Well, I'm busy until about 1400 hours, so why don't you come by and give it a shot around then?"

"Give what a shot?" Jake asks, though his mind, which is almost as much of a slippery bastard as Nate is, has already come up with six different opening lines he can use, all six of which will have Nate wrapped around his little finger before dinner. Way before dinner.

He's not quite sure what he's going to wear yet. Maybe nothing. Nothing might work pretty well.

Nate, the fucker, is already walking away, calling, "It's a date, then," over his shoulder, as if he's got Jake all figured out.

Of course, he's not wrong about that, per se. 

Jake sighs and decides to go and see if someone's already retrieved his old uniforms.


End file.
